Fred Zaspel (Books At a Glance):
Today we have an author interview with Steve Wellum from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Steve authored with Peter Gentry the book Kingdom Through Covenant a couple years ago, and it has deservedly received a lot of good attention. Now they have come out with a condensed edition of that book entitled God’s Kingdom Through God’s Covenants: A concise Biblical Theology. Steve has been a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for a good many years now.
Steve, it’s great to have you with us. Let’s get into this, God’s Kingdom Through God’s Covenants. For starters, just tell us what your book is all about? What is your point? What’s the contribution you’re hoping to make?
Steve Wellum:
Sure. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about the book. Basically it is a shortened version of Kingdom Through Covenant and the shortened aspect of it is it’s just presenting the proposal or the argument that we made in Kingdom Through Covenant on how the covenants interrelate to one another and how you move from creation to Christ and all the covenants find their fulfillment in Christ. So in this volume we’re not really engaging a whole lot with the theological systems of covenant theology or just dispensationalism, We’re just saying here’s how we read the Bible so we’re laying out our presuppositions and hermeneutics on the table, working through the biblical covenants, providing some kind of synthesis so that the idea behind it was that Kingdom Through Covenant was fairly large and technical in many, many thoughts so this would be something that people could pick up in 260 pages and get the basic argument of the book. So that’s what the book is about, and in terms of contribution what we’re trying to do is we’re not trying to say anything brand new; we’ve got some insights that nobody has. What we’re trying to do is understand God’s word how the whole plan of God unfolds across the entire Bible from Genesis to Christ to ultimately the Book of Revelation and how the covenants are central to the backbone of the entire plan or the backbone of the narrative or the metanarrative.
Zaspel:
So you’re saying the covenants carry the story.
Wellum:
The covenants carry the story so we’re not trying to reduce the covenants—kingdom through covenant—to the theme of the whole Bible, we’re saying you can’t understand where the plan of God is going, what the plan of God is, how it reaches its culmination in Christ, how any text ultimately makes sense in light of the whole unless you think through how the covenants unfold, how the plan of God is now coming to culmination in Christ.
Zaspel:
Is there a 60-second version? Can you summarize the Bible story for us as you see it shaped by the covenants?
Wellum:
Yeah. Sure. Obviously the whole Scripture starts with the centrality and the glory of the triune God. So he’s been there for all eternity. He has a glorious plan that he has enacted by creating a stage of human history. It involves even the reality of sin so that in creating human beings he has made us image-bearers, vice regent sons in the full representational sense that has come in Adam, a federal covenant head who has sins. God has graciously chosen to save a people and to restore the effects of sin and death in all its implications, and through the covenant, that great and glorious plan of salvation is unfolded. The covenants are revelatory; they govern people’s lives; that they are revelatory of the great plan that ultimately comes to fulfillment in Christ so that Christ is the one who is the Lord who saves, yet he is also the one who identifies with us. We need one who will represent us, who will be our substitute, who will obey like we’re all supposed to obey and Adam didn’t obey and reversed the effects of sin and death to pay for our sins, to bring us back the way God has made us to be and even greater realities in the future than what was in the original creation to forever be in a covenant relationship with him.
Zaspel:
You’ve made a point to say that all this is a way between dispensational theology and covenant theology. Explain that for us. How do they differ? In what important ways how is this an alternative?
Wellum:
Right. When we said that, it needs careful qualification, the first thing you have to say is that we’re not saying we’re right in everything and everyone else is wrong. We’re talking about both covenant theology and dispensationalism in what we’re trying to do, and ultimately what we’re trying to do is understand the whole counsel of God.
So how did the whole plan of God unfold? How did the scriptures put it together, and everyone wants to see it as obviously coming to fulfillment in Christ. Now as covenant theology has their way of hooking the metanarrative together, putting the canon together, it does so through covenants, but it does so in a way that we’re not convinced at every point it’s exactly correct so that we’re saying oh yes, we agree here, here, here, here, but at these specific points we have disagreement. Dispensationalism is a form of biblical theology which is trying to put the whole canon together. It’s doing it at—obviously we have a similar view of thought and humans and sins and Christ and Salvation—yet at key points it’s differing from covenant theology. It’s emphasizing certain key areas, that we say yes, but no, I don’t really agree with that. So the two dominant theological systems we’ve said at certain points. We’re not in agreement and so we’re trying to provide a way that we can absolve the differences between those two views, get at the heart of those differences and try to say that scripture is providing a different direction than both of those systems are going.
Zaspel:
Well, without having to get into a defense or even an offense for that matter, what specific theological issues does this ultimately affect or touch in some way? Where does this make a significant difference?
Wellum:
In those areas if we think of the covenants in relationship to covenant theology and dispensationalism it will then specifically focus on certain areas of disagreement that we’ve had throughout the ages. So if we zero in on just those systems, where it will really show up is in eschatology issues. So how does the whole sweep of God’s plan unfold? Particularly dispensationalism will focus on the role of ethnic Israel; that will be a major difference. So ecclesiology to eschatology to millennial issues. Millennial are not as much unless there is a specific form of dispensational premillennialism. Our view could incorporate an amillennial or a historic premillennial view – both would be consistent with the view, but it will affect those areas.
As it shows up in ecclesiology, that will not only affect dispensational thought but covenant theology. And then, of course, it will affect the nature of the church, the ordinances, particularly the issues of baptism, maybe the Lord’s Supper depending on the view not necessarily. So in the end when you look at those views it affects those matters.
Now there are other theological issues than just covenants. Covenants touch everything. So how we understand who God is and his relationship to the world and how we understand our role in the world. Christian theology has much more agreement on those things so we don’t want to say it’s going to affect every one of those areas differently. It’s going to bring I think a biblical world view to bear on those matters, but when it is zeroing in specifically on the theological systems, you really hit areas of ecclesiology, eschatology, and even some matters of soteriology, the experience of the new covenant believer vs. the Old Testament saint and that kind of thing.
Zaspel:
Okay, switching gears a little bit – you argue at some impressive length that the arrangement with Adam in the garden was a covenantal arrangement, a creation covenant you call it. I’ve got a couple of questions here. First, does your creation covenant differ at all in substance from what’s otherwise called the covenant of works?
Wellum:
Yeah, I mean, the covenant of works is as you know, and many of the listeners will know is tied to Reformed theology and covenant theology in terms of the covenant of redemption, the external plan of God, the covenant of works with Adam in creation so that he is in a probationary period. He is obeying and rightly he will be confirmed in righteousness so there’s that works sense depending on who’s putting it to gaining merit, and if he failed, he sinned, he rebelled against God and there’s the covenant of grace that then moves from Genesis 3:15 across all the covenants. So the covenant of works is associated with Adam and creation. So there are many, many elements of it. I don’t see that we are highly different. We just frame it differently in the sense that we would say Adam is already in relationship. We would take the rest of the seventh day as a covenant rest. God is enjoying his creation, entering into a relationship with it so that he’s already in relation. In light of the whole bible we’d have to say that that’s not in the consummated state so the notion of probation and that kind of thing is possible so we don’t have a disagreement there. Probably the idea that we go more against is trying to not have any idea that he is sort of earning merit or earning righteousness. He is in relationship. There would be I guess some kind of confirmation. Of course, it never happens that way so we don’t know. As an image-bearer he is to obey as a creature and a covenant keeper type of thing, he is to obey the Lord. So there is a demand for obedience. He disobeys.
So there are similarities where we’re pretty much wanting to emphasize more the positive in the sense that he is in a positive relationship. He’s the head of creation. He has a task before him. He has everything to lose. Absolute obedience is demanded as it is of all creatures. So we avoid any notion of sort of earning merit of earning salvation that sometimes is conveyed with the covenant of works.
Zaspel:
Okay, great clarification. Another question related to that. How important is it that this arrangement with Adam is called a covenant. You’ve probably read my review about it and some questions I raised about it. You’ve really got my attention on this by the way. As you know, on the one hand you might have a John Murray who argues that it’s not a covenantal arrangement but it’s an Adamic administration. You’ve got Paul Williamson, on the other hand, who argues for creation purpose that’s evident. My question I think most importantly is with regard to somebody like Paul Williamson who argues that there’s a creation purpose and that purpose is advanced through the historical covenants. Once we get to Noah and beyond, you and Williamson I think would have the largest areas of agreements. He’s arguing that it’s advancing a creation purpose; you’re arguing that it’s advancing this creation covenant, yet there is extensive agreement from there. So how important is it, why is it important that it’s called an Adamic or a creation covenant?
Wellum:
That’s a great question. I mean, the hesitation that people have with calling it a covenant is that the word covenant is not found there and then there is some debate later on in the Scripture about Adam whether it’s a reference to the covenant. Is there an exegetical grounding to it? Peter has tried to argue on the basis of establish and cut covenants. Whether he is right on that, I mean, he’s convinced he is—I’ll take his word for it—but I’m not going to hang everything on just that. I think of context, the whole bible and this type of thing makes it look like a covenant.
Now when you come to Williamson, obviously there is a lot of agreement with Paul Williamson, yet he wants to say the purpose continues. The problem with that is I can’t make sense of the story line. So if Noah is the first covenant and sort of the purpose of creation continues in Noah, Paul takes everything back to Adam. Everything goes back to creation. Even Noah himself is just a reduplication of Adam—the same mandates given to him, etc.. So it seems to me that even though the word is not there, we do have a covenantal context. We have obedience demanded. We have in some sense the curses that are there. We have the name of Yaweh in Genesis 2; that certainly is a covenantal name that’s used. We have everything that looks like a covenant relationship but all of God’s relationships with his creatures. All that we know of them are covenantal in some sense. Then, of course, I think what’s lost if we don’t see covenant people—again, you can call it whatever you want—but I think it’s best to call it a covenant because what gets lost is taking things back to creation, seeing Adam then as the representative of the human race, you have to do justice to Romans 5 and other passages. But I mean, everything goes back to Adam. All the other figures that come later, whether it’s Noah, Abraham, Israel, are subsets of Adam, and that’s where the story line goes so that he is a representative, and I think what gets lost here is the strong legal notion that is a whole debate in today’s theological world about legal and then tied to a new perspective on Paul and this type of thing. But I mean, the grounding to the creature before God and relation before God begins there and the representation and then you have sinned, that there is a condemnation that comes and that Christ now as the one who is last Adam, who is the head of a new covenant, it’s hard to make sense of what Adam is doing there if it was just sort of creation purposes. He is a representative. He is a figure, that’s an individual who stands for the whole, and as you work through the rest of the covenants, it is individualized. Adam is an individual. You move to sort of Israel as a corporate and then it is brought back through David to individual to Christ. And it seems to me that you lose some of those important creation order structures etc. Also in our debate today, you think of affects in these kinds of areas. The Bible does have a thought here of creation, fall, redemption, new creation structure to it, and if you lose that original creation, the distinction from the fall, human dignity, sexuality—these kinds of things back in creation, there is a lot that’s lost. And I can’t make sense of that relationship that Adam and Eve had before God, Adam’s role, Adam as an image-bearer. Even image language in the ancient Near East is very covenantal language, just hard to make sense of the story line of the Bible if you just start at Noah.
Zaspel:
Okay. Great. Another point that has gotten some attention in your book is the matter regarding covenants and whether or not they are properly called conditional or unconditional. You argue that those categories are inadequate, and I get your point. Even in the divine promissory covenants such as the Abrahamic or the Davidic, there are human responsibilities that are entailed and that’s important. You’ve read my review of the book, and I suggest that this might leave us by default to understand covenants then as conditional which is not what you’re wanting to say either.
Wellum:
No, no, no.
Zaspel:
So you want to affirm the final success of the promissory covenants, that that’s not left in question, that in Christ all conditions will be perfectly met. So what about my concern there? What do you think?
Wellum:
If we give the impression that they’re sort of reduced to conditionality, that would be a major concern because that’s not what we’re trying to say. We have to be very, very careful how this is said. The first thing about it is that when we say that the conditional/unconditional, unilateral, bilateral—that kind of thing—distinction is used so that you could just look at this covenant labeled unconditional; this covenant is conditional and just simple that way. The problem with that—and this is our hesitation—is that it’s more complicated. It’s a little bit reductionistic because every covenant has obedience demanded. Now ultimately as that is demanded from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Israel to David, part of the story line of Scripture is that as humans in Adam and thereafter have not obeyed so that we need an obedient son. So the obedience theme and the conditionality, God as creator demands from his creatures and his covenant creatures obedience, and so that runs through every single covenant.
Now there is a focus on some of the covenants because obviously God is the one who must act in grace. God must initiate and so you do have certain emphases like Abraham in Genesis 15. I mean, you can’t miss the unilateral action of God walking through the pieces and all the symbolism that’s involved in that or the promises, the promises of Genesis 15. So you must maintain that undergirding the entire covenant relationship is God must initiate; God must act sovereignly. God must act in grace so that unilateral aspect must be emphasized. But the conditional is that the creatures, no matter what covenants you’re under, are to obey and they’re to obey perfectly. Abraham is to obey, yet the promises of God undergird all the covenants.
So it’s trying not to fragment the covenants. It’s also trying to say that the covenants – it’s best to see the covenants as not only plural in the sense that there are covenants but it’s all unfolding one plan. And the plan as you work through the covenants is disclosing that plan in a greater way. We’re seeing the demands, we’re seeing the tensions. We’re seeing the provision of God so that in the end as it all leads to the new covenant, there is the provision of God. The Lord Himself provides himself in his son who is then the obedient son.
Zaspel:
He’s the faithful covenant keeper.
Wellum:
And he’s the faithful covenant keeper so you have both the unilateral and the conditional brought together in the God the Son Incarnate, and that’s the glory of the gospel.
Zaspel:
Great. Okay, this book is not quite released yet so I can’t ask you about that, but your original one, Kingdom Through Covenant – how has that been received out there? Are you guys encouraged with it?
Wellum:
We’ve been just thrilled that people have paid attention to it. They’ve interacted with it. They’ve reviewed it. I mean, it’s such an honor to have people even notice it. So we’re just tickled pink that that’s happened. Obviously as we didn’t throw it out there to say that we’re trying to take sort of agree with aspects of covenant theology and dispensationalism, disagree, not realizing that we’re going to get short by each of those camps. And that’s fine. We don’t mind. We think that we can uphold our position, and we want to hear back.
Sometimes it’s been disappointing if we feel that they really haven’t understood the position or it’s just simply they sort of critique it in terms of their system — we inevitably do that — but they’re not really listening to the main argument. So that just means that we need more conversations, and we need to be charitable and kind, that we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ as we work through these issues. We’re not saying that the people we disagree with aren’t Christians or anything else, this is an in-house discussion trying to understand better the whole counsel of God. But many, many people—and I think there are a lot of people today who feel that there is a kind of middle position that is necessary. We don’t have all the answers on it but we’re trying to say here’s something that we think is a better way of seeing how the covenants unfold. We ultimately want to preserve the glory of Christ and the Gospel and call people to faith and repentance and worship and service and the Great Commission work by serving Him in the Church.
Zaspel:
Now you and I have already talked about this next question, but I think it would be helpful for you to address it publicly. I suggested in my review that you write yet a third book that lays out your case positively without the polemics, simply telling the vital covenant-shaped story as it is. Tell us what we can expect in that regard.
Wellum:
Well, it’s a birds-eye view of the Bible and just why a study like this is important as a lesson and how then do we go about reading scripture and then how we work through creation, fall, redemption and through the biblical covenants. So I’m working with a former student and trying to get that out there. It’s not out there yet, but a number of chapters have been written so we’re probably going to write it and then see if someone will pick it up and publish it.
So there is a lot of good biblical theology, some popular works that are out there all the way from Goldsworthy, Jim Hamilton, others like this who are doing that. What we don’t see still is — there are some but not many of them are discussing the covenants or if they are it usually falls more in the traditional understanding of things so that we do see a need for a popular work that does lay out this covenant.
Zaspel:
I think it will be great. I think it would be very helpful.
All right, before I let you go, let’s look ahead a bit. You’re presently working on a new book on Christology, when can we expect to see that and do you have any other books in the works that we can look for?
Wellum:
Well, right now I’ve sent off all the edits of the Christology book with Crossways, part of the Foundations of Theology series so now it’s in the hands of my dear editor, John Fienberg, and he has a very careful eye so I’ll have to get by him. But if that’s the case then would be out probably the beginning of next year.
Then I have a book in celebration of the Reformation in 2017. Zondervan is putting out five books on the five Solas, and I had the privilege of writing the best one on there on Solus Christus. All of the Solas ultimately come together. I’m just working on that. I have to have that at Zondervan this Fall. And so I’ll take what I’ve done on the person of Christ and work—it’s a shorter version and I’m working on the work of Christ and why Christ alone is essential for today’s discussion.
And I’m also working on a Systematic …
Zaspel:
Oh, really? I hadn’t heard that.
Wellum:
Well, I’ve contracted B&H to put together a Systematic a few years down the road. You can pray for me or give me the energy and wisdom and trying to craft it in such a way that it picks up some of these themes on the covenants and how they relate as well as serving the church in terms of standard doctrinal issues and the fights of the day.
Zaspel:
Well, we’ll pray that the Lord gives you enough birthdays to finish all that.
Wellum:
That’s right.
Zaspel:
Well, thanks a lot for this and congratulations on the new book. I hope it gets some great exposure and is well-read. Thanks a lot, Steve.
Wellum:
Thank you, Fred. I really appreciate it.